Google Buzz has the potential to be THE ultimate social media dialogue and content aggregation machine. Here are three short-term ideas that will make it infinitely more usable and convert the skeptics.

Compact the Content

Problem: Showing the buzz and all the comments (even just 10 – and how are they decided?) is really noisy. Particularly when you follow people who get serious engagement like Jason Calacanis, Pete Cashmore and “Mr. Noisy” Robert Scoble. Users will decide when they want to read the comments. Result: more content is read. I do not see a decrease in engagement. The people who don’t like to read comments were not going to read them anyway.

Filter Out Channels

Problem: Some people are still using multiple social media tools. They want to continue to use them for what they like to use them for and they are not coming to Buzz to have that content duplicated. OK. Let them remove the content they do not want to see. Caveat: They can’t remove Buzz original content.

Here’s a quick and easy way to remove the content you do not care about.

Clicking “Filter Channels Options” takes your to this screen that allows you to set options globally and also to change your mind if you decide you want the content back. (Yeah, I grabbed the channels from FriendFeed).

Make Buzz Post to Twitter

That’s game over.

Google’s social network killer is upon us and it is called Buzz. It is the tool that has Facebook screaming in agony, twitter paralyzed with terror and tumblr, posterous, gowalla, and foursquare raising a collective eyebrow.

The first iteration of Buzz is nothing more than a light version of my personal favorite social network, (queue angelic music) FriendFeed. It allows you to aggregate content from other social networks, including twitter, and also create your own content via a picture, link or text driven buzz. From the content it is possible to create threaded conversations, an area where Twitter is sorely lacking [Hashtags are horrible. You drop and disrespect them all of the time. Admit it.] and that Facebook and Friendfeed both have very firm handles on.

What’s the Point?

With any new take on an existing platform you have to ask yourself what the point is. This point is to steal market share [of course.] Buzz basically validates that Google thinks that FriendFeed was the correct approach. So what does it have that FriendFeed lacks? Nothing, right?

Wrong.

The answer is prominence¹.

FriendFeed is out of sight out of mind, but there are over 146 million users of gmail² and they were all greeted with a splash screen that told them about Buzz. So while Google may have plans to differentiate themselves from FriendFeed, Facebook and Twitter in the future, right now the fact is that they have exposed themselves to an audience that is larger than the size of Russia. If Buzz begats buzz, look for Google to make a larger investment and a more feature-rich platform. Analytics anyone?

¹Yes, the mobile app has some cool location based features too.
²Arrington, Michael (2009-07-09). “Bing Comes to Hotmail”. Techcrunch. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/09/bing-comes-to-hotmail/. Retrieved 2009-07-11. “Hotmail is still by far the largest web mail provider on the Internet, with 343 million monthly users according to Comscore. Second and third are Yahoo (285 million) and Gmail (146 million).”

Caveat: This is fun and non-scientific and directional. It took me about 15 minutes. I created three groups of posts:

• all posts about Scott Brown
• all about Martha Coakley
• all posts about Scott Brown and Martha Coakley

And through the magic of Social Media Monitoring (thanks @Radian6)…

Both Candidates are Campaigning Hard

Looks Like Brown Has a Slight Edge in Voting

query: voted for Brown (and not Coakley) vs. voted for Coakley (and not Brown)

Brown’s Supporters Are More Passionate

query: Love / Like / Hate / Dislike Brown (and not Coakley) vs. Love / Like / Hate / Dislike Coakley (and not Brown)

It’s going to be interesting to see how this one shakes out. I am voting later today.

I was very excited to hear about the ustream.tv iPhone app. I love the site and use it as my go-to application for live streaming. Yesterday, I downloaded their iPhone application.

I was wicked excited as it gave me a couple of things that I have been wanting: The ability to stream live and to do video without jail-breaking my phone. I downloaded it, logged in as BelchingMonkey and began to stream. I clicked on go live, I got one viewer and when I was finished, I selected the option to not save the video.

Luckily, I talked to Gregory Ng yesterday. I told him I downloaded the application and he said “Yeah, I saw your videos. You have 4 on the site”.

Three were videos that I did told the application not to save. The fourth was a video that I took last night, but did not even mean to take. I clicked on the app and it started recording on its own. It also HORRIFIED me when I saw this at the end of the video:

So the moral of the story here is that you can use the ustream.tv iPhone app, but be prepared for it to potentially stream your activity after you shut down the application. You could end up giving away your email addresses unwittingly or worse, allowing people a window into your personal or business email accounts.

I hope we hear a response from ustream.tv soon and plan to be very vocal about this until we hear from them. I happen to think their technology is amazing, but that they have been irresponsible in putting extremely buggy software into play. I am all for constant-beta, but these seem like problems that should be sorted out in alpha code.

Feature after wonderful feature, Friendfeed’s web interface is beautifully elegant. Control the flow of your content stream from raging amazon river to gentle backyard creek with easy-to-create groups. Beautifully done is the find / invite friends feature which not only allows you to subscribe to friends from other social networks, but lets you create a group on-the-fly.

If you’re a marketer, social media pirate, brand, celebrity or super hero, you probably have a friendfeed account, but are you using it? We know that content is king and friendfeed allows you to bring it all together for show – while also allowing you access to ALL of your friends’ content. Seriously. The Friendfeed team was tied to a chair, eyelids glued open and force fed Barney and Sesame Street until they fully understood that EVERYTHING must be shared.

Share Your Content

And share you can! Not only does it have real-time, native integration with 58 (at post time) blogging, bookmarking, video, status, music, books and news tools, it allows you to integrate anything else with an RSS feed. I currently share content from 18 different sites on friendfeed.

Share Your Thoughts

Friendfeed’s Like | Comment | Share features allow you not only to add your own thoughts to a stream, but post them to link prediction markets like digg and stumbleupon or other micromedia sites like facebook and twitter.

Friendfeed has support for comments on any content, but also allows you to pass it through to other social properties with the Share link. Want to follow a conversation for the ages? Like it. The My Discussions feature will pull up everything you like or comment on so it does not get lost in a raging stream.

Share Other Content

Want to share content on Friendfeed? Use the tool bar bookmarklet, or email it to share@friendfeed.com. Friendfeed even has ways to notify you when you receive new content- via text messages and instant messenger. It’s borderline sick.

So, how serious are you about sharing? Probably not as serious as Friendfeed.

The 2009 Boston Gravity Summit was held, surprisingly, in the home of traditional ideals, the Harvard University Alumni Club. The dark woodwork, winding staircases, private dining rooms and original artwork on the walls seemed an unlikely place for new media content delivery. But the hosts allowed the Boston social media scene to descend upon it, some of us in jeans, to tell our collective story to the public. And – this Gravity Summit was broadcast on CNN.

Hammertime

MC Hammer told a story of eyeballs and sales. His “social media” story was a story of authenticity. Ghosting, when someone else updates your social profile on your behalf, he shunned. He likened his experiences in the space to his experiences as a preacher (great question Gradon Tripp). His was the story of an entrepreneur- one who is convinced that he can sell the 250,000,000 Facebook users SOMETHING.

Shenanigans

Disaster Management

Surprisingly awesome was Wendy Harman of the American Red Cross. She told a story of a platform that is critical for disaster management communication. The American Red Cross has 150 twitter personas that they manage. She noted that the Santa Barbara Red Cross was more than likely furiously tweeting about the current forest fire situation in California. The Red Cross is also an excellent case for distributed brand persona management.

Worst Practices

Josh Levine of Rebel Industries gave a great talk on Social Media Worst Practices. He likened social media to a Bill Cosby joke about drug use.

I said to a guy, “Tell me, what is it about cocaine that makes it so wonderful?” And the guy said, “Well, it intensifies your personality.” And I said, “Yes, but what if you’re an asshole?”

He also talked about authenticity and using social media to go underground. When complimented on his use of up-and-coming “what’s next” hip-hop artists in a Toyota Scion campaign, he said it was part passion play on his organizations part, but part going to the experts in the crowd to find out who is on the bleeding edge.

THUNDER

Gary Vay Ner Chuk brought the thunder as usual. Although his presentation was shorter than I would have liked, he got across a few key themes. First: people who are buying bus signs and billboards in places like Harvard Square are obviously not watching the crowd. Everyone is looking down at their phone and not looking the ads. Ad spend? Wasted. You think Gary’s a wine guy? He’s a new media guy – THE new media guy.

Firmly grasping that content is king, he also talked more on the topic of content ownership and creation. In true Gary Vaynerchuk fashion, he told us like it is. He said: If you’re truly passionate about the content, you should give it forever. Do it forever, bleed out the eyes, you will be happy because you are doing what you love. In other words: #crushit.

photos by (and of) Gradon Tripp

I saw a lack of data-driven content in last year’s SXSW and hope these ideas will fill some of that void. I don’t have a free pony or even a case of Red Bull to give to you if you vote for these panels, but I do havesome themes that should spark passionate debate about quantifying the value of Social Media and relationships.

Uncovering Social Media Data You Can Count On

With stakeholders throughout the enterprise taking a role in the ownership of conversations in social spaces, each wants to know the impact of a relationship on demand creation, customer retention and support efficiency. This panel addresses how to make the numbers meaningful for sales, marketing, customer service and product teams.

Click here to vote for Uncovering Social Media Data You Can Count On

Extending B2B Acquisition Strategies Using Micromedia

Let’s discuss the importance of proper brand personification in micromedia spaces. We will talk integration of micromedia as a channel in a communications plan and alignment of messaging with strategic objectives. We will cover clear statement of objectives, managing multiple objectives, integration with CRM and community initiatives and attribution of a sale to micromedia. The overlay will be the balancing act of how much sales vs. thought leadership vs. customer service vs. your laundry list of others.

Click here to vote for Extending B2B Acquisition Strategies Using Micromedia

DataRock

What would this post be without a little DataRock?

An Epic Event / Themes of Social CRM

I attended Radian 6 and Chris Brogan’s the Rockstars of Social CRM event last night. The panel had some of the heavy hitters of Social Media and CRM. Marcel LeBrun, CEO of Radian 6, Frank Eliason who you know better as @comcastcares, Paul Greenberg, Author of CRM at the Speed of Light, President of The 56 Group, LLC, Brent Leary, Co-author of Barack 2.0 and Co-founder of CRM Essentials and Michael Thomas, National President, CRM Association. The key themes really resonated with me and I agreed with them.

• Social CRM gets back to basics
• a return to Helpful 1.0 not Sales 2.0
• Good relationships = good sales
• You must earn your right to sell.

The Land Grab

Then something weird happened. The panel made a comment about Social Media ownership. They poked fun at PR and Marketing trying to get their clutches on Social Media and suggested that the only real home for Social Media is with Sales, specifically Customer Service. Suddenly, all of the IT people in the room fainted because they were left out of the land grab! Marketers wept openly. PR folk made some calls.

People complain about #FollowFriday because people just throw out a bunch of names without giving any reason to follow the people on the list. My solution has been to provide a reason or theme with each person I recommend. For instance,

#followfriday @agrahamwilcox <- Must follow for NBA fans

Today, Brad Ward decided to take it all up a notch.

The story begins at SXSW. SXSW is the conference that keeps on giving. In the past I have equated it to cramming a whole semester of college into 2 weeks. The people that you meet are the people you want to meet, the experiences that you share are meaningful both in the “classroom” and in the bars and social events.

On the night of the mashable party, Not only did I sing Ziggy Stardust with a live band, meet Seth Rogen and Joseph “Cobra Commander” Gordan-Levitt, I met Brad J. Ward.

I was heading to the bar to pick up my 4th (or so) and I was in queue to sing with the band. Well, the video tells the story

Did I think he was going to gank my charger? No. But my own phone was low on juice and I couldn’t hear the bartender. The band was RIGHT in front of us and Brad was looking to disappear. What good is a business card if I can’t charge my phone later? I decided to chill out about it, sing my song and have fun at the party instead of worrying about whether I would be connected later. Glad I did. Brad is an amazing person that I met at the conference and I am having a good time getting to know him better through twitter. Follow him!

Julia Roy Schools the Michael Schneider on Tweety from the Michael Schneider on Vimeo.

I’ve tried all of the free twitter iPhone applications only to come to the conclusion “you get what you pay for”. I left Twitteriffic for Twittelator and then for Twitterfon, but simple features like following people and tweeting from more than one account were still missing from my experience. I met Julia Roy of Undercurrents after day 1 of SXSW. She had just the thing for my iPhone twitter woes!